Airlines attempt to reinvent the business class with the introduction of “premium economy”

Priority boarding. Extra legroom. Champagne before takeoff. It’s not just the stuff of business class dreams…

“Airlines aren’t chasing volume anymore, they’re chasing the bottom line,” explains Mike Boyd, chairman of Boyd Group International, an Aviation consulting firm in Evergreen, Colorado. “Part of this is this Premium Economy thing. Business class has become the battleground. That went up and up in terms of perks but has become too expensive, so now we’ve gone back to introducing another class—we’ve gone full circle. And internationally, Premium Economy is what business class was 20 years ago.”